My Hat and I?

Does anyone really understand me and my hat?

Living in a Sunny Dream

“You might think you look like someone who is walking the African savannah, but....” The family verdict was coming about my new purchase of a fabulous Panama Hat. “to us it just looks like, well, it just sort of sits on your head” .

“That’s what they are supposed to do”, I reply, quietly relieved that’s all they could throw at me.

They are right of course, the hat might not physically transform me to the deck of the African Queen with Humphrey Bogart (who I have just been informed wore a sailors hat in the film) but at least I can use my imagination and not get sunburnt ears while I dream of sitting under a rotating roof fan sipping a gin and tonic  in the tropical heat (the tonic is to supply me with quinine to stop me getting malaria in the film that’s going on in my head of course.) 

Tackling Weeds

I’m tackling a few weeds in between the rows of peas and beans today. It’s funny how my approach to the weeds changes throughout the year. In winter I don’t really think of them at all, early in spring I try to get them as they germinate, in late spring I pick and hoe down the annuals and pull out the perennials before they get to about three inches. 

As the summer approaches I try to keep them off the veggies to give the plants a better chance at catching the light. In mid to late summer all I want to do is to pull or hack them back so they don’t flower, go to seed and spread. By autumn I realise just how futile my attempts have been, especially when the neighbours don’t have the same attention to dandelion seed heads and encroaching brambles as me. Airborne seeds know no boundary. It’s good for me to have a few rogue weeds around though, it adds to the diversity of the garden and I get more visitors of the insect variety coming to visit, most of them friendly.

Second Flush

I’ve been cutting back the herbaceous geraniums. They are not the same as pelargoniums you see in hanging baskets as they spread like crazy given the space.  I have done this because they will give me a second flush of flowers come late summer.  Nepita, astrantia and lamuim are all good to chop back for a second flush as most of the flowers come together.  For other plants such as my climbing rose, the flowers are best chopped off as they go over, or drop their petals, which in this plants case, every day. If I could dig it out I would,  but it has resisted all efforts up to yet. Maybe in winter I will tackle it.

First Flush

The first flush of fast growing plants is over in the tunnel and I am being extremely organised and replanting any that I pull up. The radish, mustard, coriander have been reseeded and I have also done a late sowing of spinach, basil and lettuce. 

I’ve also planted a late batch of broccoli for my father in law, but the intense heat has killed off three attempts I have made so far, they are not used to being germinated at this time of year really.  The fourth attempt has been put away in a cool shay place until they plants are sturdy enough to look after themselves.  Some of the cuttings from the box hedge I dug up last week have suffered the same fate, ones that were in direct sunlight turned brown in a day. Thankfully I still have 40 good ones going into the shade with the broccoli so all is not lost.

Bushy Tomatoes

The tomatoes are coming on well, both inside and outside of the tunnel. I have three different types to cover me in case any are like the balls of foam I had last year.  There are some busy types that I am leaving alone to fall on the tunnel floor and spread like they would in the Mediterranean, but some of the others I am pinching the side shoots out and supporting on poles to speed up the fruiting and ripening process. We generally have to do this to cope with the short growing season here, but after the last few weeks I think it’s the turn of the bushy ones to keep on cropping.

In fact standing next to the tomato and geraniums I do feel as though I could be sunning myself on a veranda in the Med, the hat helps of course, but no-one really understand me and my hat..